a worthy cause

The following is from a long-time [but not old!] friend of mine, who has put a lot of effort into this project for the past few years. He has been able to get kids to bike to school more actively, but he needs some help financing the project. Maybe there is a Freiker in your child’s future…

===

In March 2005, I was plagued with complaints from my kids about having to ride their bikes to school. In December 2007, that problem has been solved. And many, many more kids are riding their bikes to school in Boulder, too. These children are healthier, more attentive, and more independent. What more could a parent ask for?

The frequent biker program called Freiker that I started in March 2005 is operating at five Boulder Valley schools, and could grow to more, many more. Unfortunately, we have four idle Freikometers sitting in my basement, waiting to be installed, because we can’t afford the prizes for the kids.

A Freikometer is a fully automatic counting device. It uses solar power so it can be deployed at a school’s bike racks. The kids have RFID tags on their helmets. When they ride by the Freikometer, they hear a ring, letting them know they have been counted. The Freikometer uploads their rides anonymously to freiker.org where parents and kids can check their rides and (real soon now) order prizes. The Freikometer differentiates Freiker from all other bike encouragement programs. In techobabble, it’s what makes Freiker scalable.

Freiker could be doubling the ridership at four more schools in 2008, like we did for Crest View Elementary. We just need to install Freikometers and find a way to pay for the prizes. Many schools have inquired about Freiker. All we need is a small amount of money per school to make a significant change in children’s health and everybody’s environment.

Crest View Elementary will have over 20,000 bike trips this year at a cost of 33 cents per trip ($6,000/year). Before Freiker, kids were riding their bikes only half that many times. What’s more is that the more kids ride, the cheaper the per trip cost to Freiker. No other bike encouragement program we know of can claim this type of success. The environmental benefits alone are worth it.

Freiker is a 501(c)3 charity (EIN 56-2539016). Its primary sponsor is bivio Software, Inc. bivio has spent $45K on Freiker in the last two years. We have also contributed another $200K in labor, and we will continue to do so. But we need your help.

For every dollar you send in by December 31, 2007, bivio will donate a dollar’s worth of labor. We worked out the kinks in the Freikometer’s design last summer, but we need to improve the freiker.org user experience. We can’t afford to write that software, to purchase the hardware and RFID tags, to host the website, AND to fund the prizes for the kids.